About the author

Esther Sayles Root was an American writer about whom little public information is available; neither her birth and death years nor her early life has been reliably recorded. Her best-known work is the collection of letters titled Over Periscope Pond, which grew out of her personal experience of living in Paris during World War I and records her wartime observations in epistolary form. The book carries the immediacy of an eyewitness account, describing everyday wartime life while also offering observations on the situation at the time, and it gives later readers the perspective of an ordinary expatriate resident. Documentary in subject matter and plain and natural in style, the letters are unpretentious and feel intimate and credible. Because so little material about the author survives, scholarly attention to her overall output has been limited, yet this collection remains a first-hand source for the experiences of Americans living abroad during World War I.

Written (1)

Publishers

Project Gutenberg